Memorial Day.

New York Times 100 years ago today, May 30, 1913:
    This year the occurrence of Memorial Day on Friday will insure to many persons three days of rest and recreation. There is, at last, a promise of good weather, and many thousands will spend their holidays out of town. The programme of sports and pastimes is unusually rich and varied, too, and, the rain having ceased, even before the end of Quaker meeting week, historically associated with the open umbrella, there is likely to be little disappointment.
    Memorial Day, however, was instituted for neither sport nor rural recreation. Its true significance, one likes to think, is realized by increasing numbers this year. The elaborate ceremonies in memory of National heroes will assuredly keep many away from the playing fields and the country resorts. In the morning the Grand Army veterans will have their customary parade; in the afternoon the dedication of the Maine Monument will be preceded by a more splendid, if not more significant, military pageant. In many homes the spirit of the day, set apart to honor the dead who served their country well, inevitably associates itself with the remembrance of private bereavements. Not all of the graves upon which flowers will be reverently placed to-day will be those of soldiers and sailors. But Memorial Day is of a truly National character, in some respects the noblest of all our days of ceremony, and the variety of its observance does not indicate any lack of appreciation of its solemn meaning, or of comprehension of the reverence and gratitude which belong to it.